README.md

Kraftwerk is a Python WSGI deployment and service management tool. The aim is to
make it fast and efficient to manage a number of Python based web sites or
services by formalizing and scripting deployments and site maintenance.

Kraftwerk uses existing tools like SSH, libcloud, Jinja2, YAML and argparse.
Kraftwerk is itself a Python package that installs a command line tool. The
servers only need a root login to perform actions.

Conventions

Projects

Kraftwerk installs your project requirements on the first deployment based on a
requirements.txt file in the root of your project. From there on you will need
to add a --upgrade-packages hook to the deploy command if you have new or
newer requirements.

Kraftwerk will look for a Python package of the same name as your project root
directory. You can override the Python package and WSGI path.

In addition you will require a kraftwerk.yaml configuration file to tell it
about domain names, HTTP redirects and more optional parameters:

Servers

You should have root SSH login to Kraftwerk servers with a minimal installation.
To install packages and prepare it for Kraftwerk site deployments run:

kraftwerk setup-node my.server.tld

The server stack it creates is pretty hardcoded. Other server configuration
tools allow you to write recipes for any setup. Kraftwerk aims to serve the
needs of Python web developers. The stack and web routing looks like this:

HTTP routing

runit is a UNIXy daemonizer and service management
framework that keeps your sites from crashing and brings them up on server
reboots. Look in /etc/services for the site runit scripts.

Python Environment

Kraftwerk installs some binary compiled packages that are otherwise a pain to
install with pip (NumPy and PIL). It also installs libmagickwand-dev so you
can use Wand for faster imaging.

Services

Kraftwerk servers are all equipped with PostgreSQL and Redis. PostgreSQL is
configured per app if the postgres service is found in kraftwerk.yaml. If
your project requires a writable directory with publicly served files (image
uploads or whatever) include files. Kraftwerk will then include a
UPLOADS_PATH environment variable to a writable directory.

Packages

curl

wget

git-core

htop

unzip

zip

rsync

runit

build-essential

nginx

postgresql

postgresql-server-dev-all

redis-server

libxml2-dev

libevent-dev

ncurses-dev

python-dev

python-lxml

python-numpy

python-setuptools

libmagickwand-dev

Using With AWS

... or other cloud providers

Export your AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY. Kraftwerk will pick them up and enable create-node.

$ kraftwerk create-node --size-id t1.micro production

Kraftwerk will offer to write a line in your /etc/hosts for convenience. Try logging in.

$ ssh root@production

If you can login it's ready to prepare for Kraftwerk deployments.

$ kraftwerk setup-node test

It'll output the stdout and ask some questions.

Development vs. Stage vs. Production

The goal of a stage deployment is to mirror "real-world" application conditions
to decrease the chances of fucking up once an application is deployed to a live
server. To this end Kraftwerk provides the plumbing for a convenient and quick
stage test. Secondarily stage deployments are useful for client previews and
internal testing.